Indigo Bird
Jane Viehl’s Newest Publication
Rainey Morgan,
widowed mom of twelve-year old Shiloh, commercial artist, was getting along well enough. Just fine, thanks. True that her adult-ed painting class was a struggle, that Shiloh was having difficulties in a middle-school class, that her relationship with Pete was problematic, but there was simply nothing she couldn’t handle.
Then her sister Leah phoned one night to ask a favor. Could Rainey keep Caleb, Leah’s seven-year old, for a few weeks while Leah took her PhD in marine biology off to Germany for several weeks of work regarding the effect of global warming on the seals of the North Sea?
Then her sister Leah phoned one night to ask a favor. Could Rainey keep Caleb, Leah’s seven-year old, for a few weeks while Leah took her PhD in marine biology off to Germany for several weeks of work regarding the effect of global warming on the seals of the North Sea?
Sure. Caleb was bright, squirrely, and Rainey had enjoyed the boy the few times the family had been together at their parents’ farm down in the valley. It might be fun to shake things up.
After seeing Leah off at the airport, Rainey was making peanut butter sandwiches in the kitchen when she noticed how Caleb was sitting on a bar stool, his hands hanging down, head resting on the island.
“My mother’s not coming back,” he said.
Kirkus Reviews on Indigo Bird
An Introduction to Indigo Bird
by Jane Viehl
Released June 1, 2024, Dorrance Publishing
HI! I’m Rainey Morgan, and this is my story. So what’s an indigo bird anyway? Google it and you’ll see that she practices brood-parasitism, an apparently evolutionary strategy, laying her eggs in another bird’s nest. Google doesn’t tell us what this procedure means for the one whose nest is so invaded. That’s where I come in.
I’m a 34-year-old single mom, living in Portland, Oregon, a widow, practicing my own survival strategies as a commercial artist and mom of 12-year-old Shiloh. The night my sister Leah called, I’d been at my painting class. The assignment had been a self-portrait, and the following critiques were brutal. I was complaining to my friend Pete at a late dinner after class. I mean, I felt embarrassed, defensive. What does inchoate even mean? Pete started to define it. Stop! I said. I know what it means.
I mean I just want to be great at something, I told him. I mean, like, I want a statue. Of me. You know that one of Teddy Roosevelt in the park? On a bronze horse? And I’m serious. I do want to be that good at my work. Like my dad, the genius mechanical engineer. My mom-the-entomologist. Leah, for God’s sake, my little sister with her PhD in marine biology.
Pete tried to talk me down. I guess everybody has dreams. He said he always wanted to just get a motorcycle and drive through Arizona’s desert, but I didn’t see him kicking tires at a Harley store.
Then, late that night, the phone rang. Leah. She’d been invited to join the World Environmental Council, doing a month-long study of climate change on the seals of the North Sea. Would I be able to take Caleb, her 7-year-old son for the weeks she’d be away?
Perfect. Just when I’d been feeling sorry for myself.
Or she could ask Mom and Dad.
What a brilliant idea. Of course she couldn’t ask Mom and Dad.
Caleb is this ultra-bright little kid who was born knowing the Periodic Table. The two of them, Leah and Caleb, live on Fox Island in the state of Washington homeschooling and eating organic spinach for all I know. Caleb’s a little off-center, probably doesn’t have a batch of 7-year-olds to play with, so not unexpected.
His father is not in the picture. I have no idea who he is, apparently a professor of some sort at Cal Berkeley, but Leah won’t say. As my Shiloh doesn’t have a father, either, it has become a normal state of affairs for both kids.
So I agreed to have him stay with us. Leah would fly out of Portland. Mom and Dad would come up from their farm in McMinnville for breakfast on the day of, and we’d all go together to the airport.
Back to the question of brood-parasitism. In the animal kingdom the indigo bird flies off and never looks back. But in the paradigm we’re describing here, integrating the foundling while the mom is still watching? And including grandparents as well?
Dad has definite opinions about children’s behaviors and can’t wait to impose some discipline on our little Caleb. Maybe the boy could come to the farm and stay with them instead? Mom’s too busy saving the world in her way, promoting the use of diatomaceous earth as a natural, non-chemical-based method of pest control, for example, to take much of an interest in governing Caleb.
A lot of people in one nest.